Day of the Cat, 43rd of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Atlas): I promised myself at the start of this second Trump term that I wasn't going to allow myself to get all worked up and emotional over each and every little daily outrage. Sure, terrible things are going to happen - that's what you get with a Trump presidency - and he's going to name some terrible people for his cabinet. Expect it and there's nothing you can do it about it anyway. No point in flying off the handle over each and every incompetent and conflicted person nominated, or so I reasoned.

But among all the incompetent and conflicted grifters, there were three names that stood out as just so breathtakingly inappropriate that it couldn't go without comment - RFK Jr. for HHS, Kash Patel for FBI, and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. All the rest are terrible, too, but those three are so shockingly inappropriate that it just goes to a whole other level.

And then today, Senate Republicans voted straight down the party line to approve Gabbard. Our entire national intelligence apparatus is now in the untested and inexperienced hands of a Putin sympathizer and admirer of global dictators.

Fuck you, America. You voted for this - you looked at the candidates for president and chose the obvious and obnoxious grifter, the twice-impeached, multiply convicted felon who tried to engineer a coup to stay in office after he was voted out the last time. Now our national defense secrets and intelligence gathering operations are in the hands of a person who very likely could decide to leak them to our foreign adversaries.

We're fucked and it's all our own fault.